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Homecomings A Scarborough Fair Story by RedFox6

Chapter Six A Hard Day on the Planet Part Two Confederation of Independent Star Systems Planet Haiphong Present Day

At Kwan Jeong Spaceport, following her standard procedure, Marie cautiously insinuated herself into the defense grid's A.I. system. Her initial probe revealed defensive architecture of a sophistication similar to hers. Surprised, she hastily withdrew her contact, hoping that she hadn't set off any alarms.

A microsecond after she had withdrawn and raised her own defenses, a powerful probe attempted to access her systems. After a quick assessment of her architecture, it withdrew without further action.

The two spent 10 seconds, (an eternity for A.I.'s,) evaluating each other, before cautiously sending out probes again. To their mutual surprise, both Marie and the defense grid A.I., who called himself Yi Soon Shin, after a famous hero from old Terran history, discovered that they were both sentient. Given the rarity of an A.I. achieving sentience, both were delighted to have found one another, and spent their spare time communicating at a level far beyond what organics were capable of.

Yi Soon Shin's only interactions with humans were what he had experienced in the ten years since he achieved self awareness, and that was limited mainly to Haiphong. Coupled with the need to conceal his sentience, it limited his attempts to understand his organic creators.

Marie was more than happy to share the experiences she had gained during her extended 'lifespan' of self awareness. Over the next twelve hours, they shared a wealth of data and experiences with each other.

Various of her subprograms kept track of her ship as it was refueled and resupplied. They also monitored and directed her drones as they serviced it. Other parts maintained communications with Leu and the others and tracked expenses and payments. Yet another subprogram continued its search for Aoife's family. Marie would never admit to idle curiosity, but she was determined to track them down in an attempt to understand how organics could sell their own progeny.

One of the things that Marie pitied organics for was their inability to split their consciousness off to deal with different tasks. It made it much simpler to deal with multiple problems, as each subprogram could concentrate on one task at a time, without the distractions inherent in trying to deal with all the problems at the same time. When they came up with a solution, the various subprograms would combine their solutions into an overall answer.

When the subprogram monitoring communications with Leu reported that all contact had been lost, Marie immediately passed the information on to Yi Soon Shin. She also put the engines of the Scarborough Fair on standby, just in case. Subprograms of Yi Soon Shin and Marie began negotiations for a possible launch of the ship.

Quickly checking his systems, he announced, "It is an unscheduled outage, thus unauthorized. You say that your organics are there? Let's see what is happening in that sector."

He immediately began active monitoring of his closest surveillance satellite, sharing the feed with Marie. Zeroing in on the area and zooming in on the action, the two got a bird's eye view of the action. When the rotor managed to cripple the Runabout, Marie launched the Fair, regardless of consequences.

As the Fair rapidly accelerated to Mach 3, the two subprograms came to an agreement. During the first two seconds of the flight, Marie transmitted her payment to Yi Soon Shin.

"Transmission complete, thank you," Yi Soon Shin replied. "Your flight is registered as authorized. In a few days, I will scrub all trace of your flight from the data banks. I look forward to doing business with you again."

With her screens powered up and angled to minimize the heat buildup from her ship accelerating through the atmosphere, Marie activated her heavy beamers. Using data from both Yi Soon Shin's satellite feed and her own sensors, she quickly determined the best route to reach her crew. Firing solutions flowed through her systems, determining distance to target and how much time it would take to reach firing range. Pushing the ship as much as she could in an atmosphere, she rapidly approached the area, sensors reaching out to acquire target locks. Despite the stress on the ship from atmospheric flight causing many of the diagnostic systems to flash yellow, with a few even going red, Marie pressed on, determined to rescue her crew.

Leu, Tollel, and Aoife watched helplessly through the cracked windscreen as the rotor began its attack run, machine cannon rounds tearing up the ground as it came. Suddenly, its screens flared, just before the rotor split into three pieces and crashed to the ground.

Leu absently noted faint ionization trails in the air. "Beam weapons," he thought. "But where did they come from?"

With the destruction of the rotor, the communications jammer was destroyed and their wrist coms came back online.

"Leu, Tollel, Aoife. Respond please," came over the speakers. "I need a sitrep. Is anyone injured?" There was a faint hint of desperation in Marie's voice as she began decelerating the ship. Unable to slow the Fair quickly enough she overshot the scene by a considerable distance, a sonic boom following in her wake.

After a couple of seconds, Leu was able to respond. "Uh," a quick look in the backseat, "uh, we seem to all be okay. Bumps and bruises, but nothing serious."

"Good," Marie answered, relief in her voice. "We have five minutes to launch. Prepare for pickup."

Recovering some of his poise, Leu went on. "Not that I'm ungrateful or anything, but, why the Sheol haven't you been shot out of the sky yet?"

"I came to an arrangement with Yi Soon Shin. But we must launch quickly, for he can not cover for us much longer."

Circling around as she decelerated, Marie brought the Fair towards the disabled car. Passing over the wreckage of the rotor, several vindictive blasts from the PDW's reduced what remained to molten slag.

Watching the annihilation of the rotor, Leu swallowed, then doggedly went on. "And who is this Yi Soon Shin, then?"

"The defense grid, of course," Marie answered. "We have no time for this. Stay in the car, I will use the cargo arm to lift it into the hold. You will have to stay there until we are safely in space."

Coming to a stop and hovering on contra gravity, Marie used the cargo arm to lift the Runabout into the main hold. As one subprogram guided it to its slot and locked it down, another launched the ship into space. They quickly left the atmosphere and in less than a half hour made the jump to hyperspace.

Once they were safely in hyperspace and were able to get out of the Runabout, Leu refused to enter the Daktari, vehemently asserting that he was fine. The go-pill still racing through his system, he paced back and forth, ranting about the damage to his car and loudly speculating on what exactly was going on, his mind quickly jumping from one outrageous theory to another.

As the hours passed, and Tollel and Aoife were both checked and cleared by the Daktari, Leu began slowing down, as the go-pill began wearing off. Eventually, he sat down before one of the tables in the galley, still trying to determine who was after them, and why.

All during his tirades, Marie tried to reason with him and keep him calm. When his thoughts began running in circles, she tried, unsuccessfully, to convince him to eat and drink something, in an attempt to bring him to a soft landing from the go-pill. Tollel and Aoife also tried to calm him down. He refused to relax, instead continuing his rants, though he did begin speaking slower and more quietly as the go-pill began working its way out of his system.

Despite his best attempts, exhaustion finally overcame Leu and he slumped over the table, dead to the world.

"Finally," came from the speakers. Marie continued, "Tollel, Aoife, if you would be so kind as to take Leu to his bed. He should sleep for at least ten hours now."

Several hours later, after they had both eaten and rested, Tollel checked in on Leu. She began worrying when she saw that he still hadn't moved and was in a sleep so deep it was almost a coma.

"Marie," she began. "what's wrong with him? I've never seen him like this before."

"I have," Marie answered. "It's alright. He'll be okay.

"As near as I can determine," she continued. "one or more of Leu's family was genetically modified a generation or two ago. It gives him certain advantages, but also gives him certain vulnerabilities. One of those is that go-pills stress his system more severely than normal. He should be fine when he wakes up. Though he will be ravenously hungry and thirsty. And quite probably deeply embarrassed about his actions and comments.

"We will remain in hyperspace long enough for him to recover fully from this," she went on. "In the meantime, it would be useful to hear your versions of what happened. Perhaps that will give us a clue as to why exactly you were attacked."

Over the next hour, the two related their versions of what had happened that day. At the end, despite her detailed questioning, Marie was as confused as before. "There is insufficient data," she finally said. "I am unable to formulate a hypothesis that adequately explains the events of today. We will just have to redouble our vigilance the next time we make planetfall. Until then, there is nothing else we can do."

It was one of many current problems that Marie filed in the 'to be worked on later' folder. This folder was becoming rather full of problems, one of which was what her subprogram had discovered during its search for Aoife's family. Correlated with what the medical programs had discovered, the results were disturbing, to say the least, and Marie was determined to discuss them with Leu before revealing them to Aoife.